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crystxlclear · 4 years ago

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sudden desire

chapter eight: hey, one question! what the hell?

part nine of sudden desire

in which two best friends won’t admit they’re in love so decide to have a baby together instead.

pairing: marcus pike x original female character (coraline meyer)

word count: 1.6k (she’s a short queen)

warnings: mentions of pregnancy, the tiniest smidge of angst (not really), alcohol consumption, extremely overly-enthusiastic and unnecessary use of italics, not beta’d because of course

author’s note: this chapter was born of me needing more coraline x loren interaction in my life, but it not fitting in with the next chapter. it’s a oneshot, of sorts, but it does help the story so i’ve chucked it in here anyway! next chapter’s coming suuuuuper soon (it’s like 2/3 written!) so don’t worry about the lack of marcus!

“Coraline.” The way she says sounds like she’s being reprimanded. Like it’s her mother calling her name when she’s done something wrong, a little girl hiding away inside her bedroom. Her stoicism comes out along with the wine, though she knows she doesn’t mean it, not really. She never does; she snapped at her for drinking her wine too quickly once before. Her bravado seems to grow when the flush of red wine touches her cheeks. “I won’t lie to you, I think it’s a terrible idea.” Loren Hull cocks an eyebrow at Coraline as she sighs and sinks back into the couch cushions.

Loren leans forward and sets her glass on the coffee table. Coraline eyes her scepticism as she nurses her drink, swilling the liquid around her glass until it creates a whirlpool that’s suddenly far more interesting than the conversation. She wishes it was big enough to swallow her up.

“I knew you’d say that.” She sighs in resignation.

She’d toyed with the idea of not telling a soul. That, if she did get pregnant, she’d just pretend it was some crazy accident after too many glasses of wine one evening, when their loneliness had taken over and they were in need of a friend to hold them close. She still figures it best to let her parents believe that; as close as they all may be - Coraline, her parents, Daniel, and even her brother, Jamie who they still rarely see, especially when he’s wandering carefree across Europe with someone new every week - she’s not sure her parents are entirely ready to accept the unusual nature of Coraline and Marcus’ agreement.

They’re traditional, to an extent. Whimsy and blithe, sure, time spent at concerts or travelling, or anything that made them happy whenever their hearts so desired, but the kind to believe that pregnancy spelt marriage. That was the way they’d done it, when her mom had fallen pregnant with Daniel by happenstance.

But, as she wrestled with the idea, she settled on a list of people she thought best to confide in. But the list, still - limited exclusively to Loren, Daniel and Kimmy - was, perhaps, the most daunting collection of names she’d faced in her lifetime.

Kimmy had taken it the best. When she’d told her - drying the dishes, as they always did, gossiping about the week - she could see that she was trying not to yell out loud, so she didn't wake Piper, or let Daniel know something was up before she told him.

Daniel had taken it well, too. Surprisingly well, in comparison to how she’d imagined. She’d imagine he’d scoff at her, tell her she was being ridiculous and try to talk her out of it, but he’d smiled and even hugged her, and insisted that he’d support her as long as she was happy. He’d watched her fondly as she’d bounced Piper in her lap, her niece giggling jovially at her aunt’s ridiculous facial expressions. He’d hugged her again as she left and whispered that he was sure she’d be an amazing mom.

She’d almost cried in the car on the way home.

Loren, on the other hand, was taking it about as well as expected. By insisting that she had surely gone insane

“You can at least acknowledge that you’re both crazy and that this is a ridiculous idea, right?” Loren raises her eyebrows at her best friend. Coraline doesn’t expect her to support the idea, just support her, at least.

“I know it’s probably a stupid idea.” Coraline tilts her head back against the sofa and drains the last of her juice. She’d supposed it best not to drink too much alcohol - just in case - but she could sure do with the liquid confidence right now. “But I have thought it through, a lot,” she insists, “I didn’t just decide this on a whim.”

Loren hums. “It’s a big commitment, y’know? Huge.”

“I’m not a child, y’know?” Coraline counters.

“I know, I know-” She sighs. “Look, if this is what’s going to make you happy.” Loren watches her as she drinks, still nervous, her hands gripping the glass tight enough around the lip of the glass that she wouldn’t be entirely surprised if it broke between her fingers. It wouldn’t take a genius to see that she was still worried. “So-” She seems to perk up, a first attempt to comfort her best friend. She shakes her bangs from out of her face and smiles fondly over at her oldest friend. “-have you made your appointments yet?”

“Appointments?” She furrows her brows.

Loren blinks back at her as if she’s completely crazy, as if she should most definitely understand what she means. Like her confusion makes no sense. “... your IVF appointments? I mean, I assume that’s how you’re doing it.”

“Ooooh… about that... “

“Oh, Cora.” Loren lets out a chuckle she can’t contain. She raises her eyebrow at the revelation, then shakes her head and tilts it back. Her hair brushes against the couch cushions as she begins to laugh. “You two are so damn oblivious, it’s painful,” she insists.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Coraline picks up the pillow that’s propped behind her back, alleviating some of the ache that has been building up thanks to long hours on set and on her feet, rushing around like a mad woman with reckless abandon. She hits Loren on the arm with a resounding thump, trying to hold back the smile that threatens to break out on her face at the sound of her friend’s ridiculous snorting laughter.

“You know you don’t have to do it like that, right?”

“Right. But this just felt like the best way to do it, so-”

“But that’s how couples do it, not ‘friends’,” Loren insists, drawing air quotes around the final word.

“Were the air quotes really necessary?” Coraline glares over at her, rolling her eyes. It elicits another snort from Loren, shoulders shaking as she tries to masquerade her laughter, seemingly-permanent creases at the corners of her blue eyes. “Shut up,” she groans. She lets out one of those almost-pathetic sounding giggles, the kind that she’s sure makes her seem like a child, frustrated but not enough to really be upset. The kind that hides the hint of a laugh, when your emotions are thrown into turmoil and everything comes out confusing and muddled and vaguely incoherent. “We’re just friends, I told you!”

“And I’m the President of the United States! You can pretend all you want but you’re not fooling anyone, least of all me,” she exclaims, “I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“He looks at everyone like that. I’m nothing special.”

“So, he looks at everyone like he’s just seen the sun for the first time?” She tilts her head to the side and vaguely narrows her eyes. Coraline can tell that she’s digging for some kind of confession; it was a bad habit of Loren’s - one she’d vowed to break on several drunken New Years Eves in the town square of their hometown, but so far had failed to stick to - but the thirst for gossip always seems to overtake her. She’s been better since she’s had Maisie, she barely has time to worry about any potential news she’s missing out on. Coraline is the only one who seems of interest to her, now. Though Coraline has to admit, she finds her best friend’s gossiping endearing, even if she knew one-too-many secrets about people she’d never even met.

Coraline and Loren have been friends for about as long as they can remember. They’d met at three-years-old, pre-school, on that daunting first day without their parents. Loren had always been the exuberant one; vibrant and flamboyant, raucous and bright, while Coraline had been more of a reserved little girl, kind and sweet, and small for her age until she hit high school. Looking at them then, you would think that Loren was the one in the limelight, not Cora.

But they’d known each other for so long, been there through the good times - and the bad - and still, somehow, managed to stay close when Coraline had left for California for college and Loren had followed Cora’s younger brother to D.C. like, in her own words, she was some lost lovesick teen. Jamie had broken her heart and jetted off to Europe in search of adventure, and Loren had moved on with her life in that stoic, matter-of-fact way. Still, she’d cried on Coraline’s shoulder the moment she made it to D.C., her and Scott’s belongings in a thousand-and-one boxes trailing behind her. She'd been there for Cora after Scott, too.

But, for better or for worse, Loren could see right through Coraline, and she’d be lying if she said it didn’t drive her utterly insane.

“He calls you Sunshine, for god sake.”

Loren had nearly collapsed when Cora had told her that. But Coraline has never seen what the big deal was - because, to her, it was just a friendly nickname born of the colour of the dress she’d chosen the day they met - but it seems to drive her best friend completely insane every time she mentions it or she hears the words pass from Marcus’ lips. She practically swoons at the sound of it, when he greets Coraline with his low voice and a hand pressed against her lower back..

“He doesn’t look at me like that, now, hush. Can a man and a woman not be ‘just friends’?”

“They absolutely can, but friends don’t look at each other like that. Believe me.”

Coraline shrugs. “Well, I guess we’re different then. We’re just friends.”

“But-”

“Uh uh uh.” Coraline points and wiggles her finger like she’s telling off a small child. Loren smirks at her irritation. “-friends.”

“Whatever you say.” Loren sips on her wine and side-eyes her. “Whatever you say.”

taglist: @wheresthewater @ah-callie @its--fandom--darling

#marcus pike x original female character #marcus pike x oc #marcus pike x fem!oc #marcus pike x reader #marcus pike #sudden desire #marcus pike x coraline meyer #the mentalist

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royalcordelia · 4 years ago

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Summary: After returning home from medical school, Gilbert discovers that the neighbor girl, Anne, has gone missing. He won't rest until he's found her, even if it means taking a leap of faith and venturing into his father's old wardrobe. (A Narnia!AU).

Notes: Merry Christmas @londonsboy!! I was your secret santa this year and I was delighted to get to know you! Talking to you made me remember how wonderful Narnia is, and I realized that Anne of Green Gables and Narnia both have that same whimsical charm about them. I hope your holiday was cozy and lovely!

1: A Child’s Lore

Gilbert remembers the Storygirl. He remembers the red twists of hair braided down her thin shoulders, each tied with bowed ribbons. He remembers the monarch butterflies balancing gingerly on her freckled fingers and the dimples haloing each half of her smile. He remembers cloaking himself away under the shadows of the treeline and watching the girl move slowly through the tall grass. With care and ease, she urged the butterflies to amble onto a nearby flower.

“Would you care for a story?” she asked them. Gilbert remembers straining his ears to pick up any trace of her voice, tender and easy on his senses. “I won’t fault you if you fly away, but if you have a few moments to spare, I have such wonderful tales.” The butterflies remained in place, fluttering their wings slowly in the warm sunlight.

“Very well, a story you shall have!” continued the Storygirl. “Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess named Cordelia. Oh, but she didn’t start out that way. You see, for most of her life, Cordelia suffered the great calamities that all poor orphan girls do…”

Gilbert’s back slid down against the tree, somehow too captivated to tear his eyes away. He settled on the ground, pushing aside verdant brush to keep his sights on her. Never before had he taken himself as a fellow who enjoyed fairytales, yet something about this tale and her voice left him no choice but to listen. So he listened. He listened and listened until she whispered, “The end!” The blues of her eyes turned toward the trees straight at him as if she’d known he was there all along. And then, she ran off, disappearing into the heart of the valley forever.

He was only thirteen then, but he remembers.

Now, he keeps the memory of the Storygirl in the same place he stores the memory of his father’s wardrobe—deep in the parts of his mind full of things he’d seen as a child, but could never prove the existence of as an adult. Myths, legends, and fancies of a child’s imagination. There lives the memory of the Storygirl and the days of yore when his father’s wardrobe held clothes, evergreen trees, and sweet breezes.

Gilbert knows they’re not real. But sometimes he wishes they were.

2: A Silhouette

Avonlea is uncertain and strange when Gilbert finally returns home. As his carriage carries him through town, the heavy feeling sinks deeper into his chest. Where has that ethereal beauty of the island gone? It used to seep out of the red soil like petrichor, but now the air has lost its fragrant charm. Gilbert can’t help but feel as if maybe the magic PEI days of his youth had been but a childish whimsy, stripped away by inevitable adulthood.

Then, the hazy memory of the Storygirl returns and for a brief moment. Uninvited, but not unwelcome. Gilbert closes his eyes and lets himself recall the details of her face. There’s comfort in his own childhood myths, as if he is not so far gone, after all. And when he opens his eyes, he’s home.

From the doorway, it looks like a portrait—Sebastian frozen on the parlor sofa with low hung shoulders, Mary holding his head to her middle and caressing his bushy silk hair. Gilbert emerges from the blue shadows of the entryway.

He should announce himself properly. Perhaps attempt reentering with a wide smile and some kind of good news to brighten the mood. Instead, he hears himself say, “Who died?”

Mary tears away from Bash with a gasp, soaring over to the door to pull Gilbert’s face into the crook of her neck.

“Gilbert! Were you due home so soon?” she says after drawing a watery breath. “I think we’ve lost track of the days!”

“Yes. I’m on time down to the minute,” Gilbert replies with a smile. “Are you...going to answer my question?”

Mary’s brows knit together in confusion as she pulls away to examine the state of his face. Her fingers smooth over the frown lines at the corners of his own eyes, but it’s Bash who answers.

“No one died. At least, we really hope not,” he explains, distracting Gilbert from his vague answer by pulling Gilbert close for a hug of his own. “None of that for now. Take your coat and shoes off before someone starts to believe that this isn’t your own home.”

For the rest of the day, Gilbert tries to whittle out the truth from Bash at any opportunity he gets. At the lunch table, after recounting tales from college and his boring graduation ceremony. At the kitchen sink, elbow deep in sudsy water. At the foot of the garden, pulling weeds and sprinkling water onto thirsty soil. He tries again and again, but Bash does not budge.

When evening rolls around, it’s pull has already lulled Gilbert to sleep on the parlor sofa. Across from him, Mary stitches together a small hole in one of his old shirts until her own exhaustion makes her prick her finger.

“Can’t keep my eyes open a second longer,” she yawns. Depositing a kiss on Bash’s head, then Gilbert’s, she murmurs, “Don’t stay up too long. I want to keep looking in the morning.”

Bash lets a moment pass when he hears their door shut, waits a few seconds more, then crosses the room to where Gilbert is sprawled out on the sofa. The newly minted doctor stirs at the feeling of his brother shaking him awake.

“Mary’s gone to sleep. We can talk now.”

Gilbert’s eyelashes are heavy, but he pries them open at the stony tone of his brother’s voice and pushes himself to an upright position.

“So...What have you been hiding from me all day?”

Bash’s lips press together.

“Did you know the Cuthberts adopted a daughter?”

“No, I didn’t,” Gilbert replies, confused why it matters.

“They adopted her just before your father passed away, I heard. You went away to our steamer, then straight to college, so you never had a chance to meet her. But when you sent me and Mary to this house, she was here waiting for us. Someone had told her that she’d be getting new neighbors, neighbors that might face the same sort of hardships she did when she first arrived. She showed us around Avonlea, helped Mary clean the house after being empty so long. Her name is Anne. Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.”

“Did something...happen to her? Do you need me to see her?”

“You can’t,” Bash spits bitterly. Then, remembering himself, he says, “She’s not sick.”

“I don’t understand, then.”

Bash sighs, balling his fists in his lap.

“Mary and I went to visit her son in Charlottetown for an afternoon last week. Anne offered to come and give everything a good cleaning while we were gone, as a neighborly gift or something. We tried to tell her that it wasn’t necessary, but she insisted. She’s not one to lose battles. She arrived a few hours past dawn, but when we came back, she was gone. Then we found out she never went home to Green Gables. No one in Avonlea has seen her in over a week.”

Suddenly, it makes sense to Gilbert why the house is weighty with the feeling of loss . It has lost something. Gilbert doesn’t know this Anne, but whoever she is, she took the island’s light with her.

“What do you think happened?” Gilbert asks, rubbing his knuckles over his eyes.

“Someone broke in. Found a woman all by herself with no one around for miles. You can imagine the rest.” Bash holds his fist with his other hand, as if he might hit something if he lets go. “Anne is...a unique woman. Kind and brave. But to Avonlea she is strange and of varlet stock, and with the way they see Mary and I… Only a few families have been willing to help us look for her. Would you? In the morning? You know Avonlea better than us.”

Gilbert doesn’t hesitate.

“I will.”

3: A Recollection

It just doesn’t add up, Gilbert thinks bitterly, splashing cold water on his tired cheeks. His reflection stares back at him, looking just as dejected as he feels. But what else could there be? I’ve already scoured the house. No signs of a struggle. Nothing broken or stolen. Guess I’ll just have to look just as hard in town. See if anyone knows anything. He scoffs. It sounds like something out of a children’s book. A fair maiden walks into a house that swallows her up whole. Too bad I’m a doctor and not a knight. He means it only in jest, but it sparks the flame of an idea in the farthest corner of his mind—the corner containing his childhood and its fanciful inventions.

And then, there it is. A memory, a reminiscence of sorts.

One wardrobe.

One door drawn open.

One small Gilbert Blythe crawling into it.

He couldn’t have been more than six or seven when it’d happened, nor can he remember why he’d even ventured into the wardrobe in the first place. Perhaps it had been a particularly clever hideaway in a game of hide-and-go-seek. Or maybe his father had sent him in search of his coat and something had tipped him off that there was more.

The memory itself is relatively uneventful. Little Gilbert opened the wardrobe door, crawled in, and somehow, miraculously tripped into a bank of snow. The bank of snow was only a mere plot of land in a world Little Gilbert was not brave enough to explore. He’d scurried back to the door, but left it cracked open for just a moment longer to memorize the world he’d found. It left an image in his mind that he carried with him forever, a memory just as fond as that of the Storygirl—a patch of evergreen trees, sweet air, and an impossible winter magic.

Let’s pretend for a moment this memory is actually a memory and not just a childish imagination, Gilbert ponders. If Anne came to clean the house, maybe she opened the wardrobe to clean it and organize it. Could she have fallen in? Maybe she’s lost! Maybe she has no way home and—

Dr. Blythe, get a hold of yourself. Exhaustion has made you mad.

You’ll assist Bash in the morning, you’ll question the town’s people, you’ll come to the bottom of this. But you won’t be able to find her by courting such preposterous ideas.

4: An Act of Trust

His resolve lasts an entire hour.

Then it dissolves hopelessly and gives way to the memory of the Wardrobe-world. Pacing in front of his father’s bed, Gilbert weighs whether or not he should indulge his childhood suspicions. It plays over and over in his mind, a frustrating possibility.

At first, he fights it.

If Anne Shirley-Cuthbert is really as headstrong as the Bash has described her to be, then perhaps she left on her volition, tired of small-island life. It can’t be that hard to believe that a woman could abandon a monotonous past in favor of whatever this young century has to offer her. Gilbert’s very last suspicion should be that Anne somehow found a magical world inside a wardrobe and never returned. Yet, here he is, nudging his foot along the carved trim of the wardrobe with an itching to open it .

Damn it all. What is there to lose?

Then he does open it. The hinges of the doors screech after being left to sleep, untouched for a decade. At first, it smells of mothballs and the stale smell of his father’s clothes. But seconds later, there’s a hint of sweet—

Gilbert slams the door shut. Absolutely not, he scolds himself. You’re hallucinating. You want this woman to return so badly that you’ll pretend she’s anywhere but dead in a ditch. But then again … Gilbert turns back to the door, placing his hand on the newly dusted wood. Who would know if he indulged in this wild feeling? Shouldn’t he, a trained doctor and an intelligent man, listen to his own gut?

Alright , he decides. If he’s going to do this, he isn’t going to do it halfway.

With a short breath, he draws the door open and closes his eyes shut. Then, he’s crawling in, a grown man squeezed into the tight confines of a wooden closet. It’s difficult to breathe above the heavy smell of age and wool, but just like before, it slips away into an unexpected sweetness. Gilbert crawls closer to it, hands and knees finding new space with every pace forward. Behind him, the wardrobe door is abandoned and opened, but Gilbert doesn’t come back out.

Instead, his fingers find tall, soft grass and his intuition cries in victory.

5: A Twinless Shoe

Gilbert allows himself exactly ten seconds to sit and stare at the pleasant forest clearing before doing what any logical doctor might do in his situation—secede to the visual proof of a magical world and promptly begin observations.

On a first glance, the impossible world-inside-the-wardrobe doesn’t seem all too different than his Avonlea. There are clusters of trees surrounding the clearing, each crowned with vibrant shades of green, moreso than those of home. A mystical softness teems in the air like a breeze, loitering along his skin until he is a mess of goosebumps. A single lamppost towers over him catching sunlight, unlit but clean of moss or dirt. At its base, a leather boot, dainty and slim.

Something clears its throat, propelling Gilbert’s soul from his body at the shock of it. He whirls around, grass stains on the knees of his trousers. Before him, sits a trio of white-tailed foxes, peering at him with more expression than should be allowed for such creatures. Gilbert tries to steady his pulse but finds the effort unsuccessful.

“They’re only foxes,” he reasons with himself. “They make all sorts of strange noises. No cause for alarm.”

“That’s a foolish delusion,” the largest of the foxes answers.

Gilbert blinks. The fox quirks an invisible brow.

“I beg your pardon?” Gilbert stammers.

The fox stretches, equal parts annoyed and bored.

“With the types of humans that are supposed to stumble out of that door, you think you’d have a firmer head on your shoulders. Wonder what Aslan chose you for?”

“I dunno, Rambleleaf. Maybe he’s here for entertainment?” the second fox pipes in. Turning her sunbright amber eyes to him, she asks, “Do you sing? Dance? Tell stories?”

“That is what he brought Anne for,” the third fox adds. “Maybe one storyteller wasn’t enough.”

“I have a hard time believing that this schmuck could tell stories as well as Anne could,” Rambleleaf counters.

“Anne’s here ?” Gilbert spits out, desperate. The conversation between the foxes dies out as quickly as it started, replaced by a stunned silence. They exchange a glance, as if deciding whether or not to indulge this fumbling fool in Anne’s whereabouts, but Gilbert is desperate. “Is Anne Shirley-Cuthbert here? I’m told she has red hair and freckles.”

“You...you speak as if you don’t know her?” Rambleleaf queries, eyes narrow.

“Not personally,” stammers Gilbert. He clambers to his feet and rushes to the foxes, who jolt but don’t shy away. It seems as if he has surprised them, as if they’ve never had a human kneel so desperately before them. “We’ve been looking everywhere for her, trying not to fear the worst. Her parents are friends of mine. They’re worried sick because one day she left to visit my family’s home and never returned. Please , will you take me to her. I need to make sure she’s okay.”

“How did you know to look here?” Rambleleaf states, unconvinced. Gilbert can give them no answer, but the truth.

“A feeling. I once came once here as a boy and remembered it, though I can’t say I know where here is.”

Rambleleaf ponders this, his tail coming up to the underside of his chin, like a hand scratching at whiskers. His eyes trail to the boot underneath the lamppost, then fall undecidedly on the poor fellow before him.

When finally he says something, it’s—“Who are you?”

“Me? Oh, um, I’m Dr. Gilbert Blythe.”

“Well, Dr. Gilbert sir, I’m Rambleleaf, or just Ramble if you’re nice about it. Welcome to Narnia.” The name Narnia sends a warm thrill down Gilbert’s spine to finally hear it. The existence of it is already enough cause for hope. Rambleleaf nudges Gilbert’s hand with a clawless paw and points over to the single boot laying sideways in the grass. “You’re in luck. We’re good friends of Anne’s. She sent us back to find the shoe she left behind, so if you want to see her, you can follow us back to the Larsack village. It’s not far from here. Just a bit north on the west border of the Western Woods.”

“I’ll follow you,” Gilbert decides resolutely.

“Good. Then grab that boot and we’ll be on our way.”

Gilbert does as he’s told, pushing aside the frustration of being told what to do by a fox. With the shoe in his possession, he curses that he didn’t think to bring any sort of satchel or carrier case. Then again, he isn’t supposed to be here long. Just long enough to find Anne and bring her home.

Then, without wasting another moment, the foxes disappear in the wood, leaving Gilbert to follow.

And he does, the door to his father’s wardrobe entirely, completely forgotten.

6: A Duet

They trek through the thicket of the forest until the soles of Gilbert’s feet have grown sore at the unfamiliar terrain beneath them. Having left his pocket watch sitting on his desk back home, Gilbert can’t be sure of how much time has passed—enough certainly for the foxes to have eased their snide opinion of him. He finds they like to listen, asking Gilbert all sorts of questions but offering no answers of their own.

As it turns out, Gilbert is not so bad a storyteller, after all.

“—but children believe in magic the way adults in my world don’t. So I told the little girl that the cure for her stomachache was a feather on the underside of her toes and all her laughter made her forget that she had eaten too many biscuits. Sometimes I think medicine has more possibilities than we can know. Certainly being here has…”

Gilbert slows to a stop and turns his ear to the sky. He draws in a quick breath of hope at the faint lilt of laughter, music, and one rich voice towering above it all.

He takes off running, hopping over Rambleleaf and sprinting down the path. A crowd’s cheers and the minstrel songs grow closer and louder with each wide stride. He all but crashes into someone at the back of the crowd, scanning the clearing for a head of red hair and a face of sandy freckles. There are a few tents set up along the circle of the crowd, and in between them must be a hundred people sitting and standing, all with their attention locked on one person. From the back, Gilbert finds his view obstructed by some particularly tall Narnians. Just as he begins to plan a route through the mass of people, a soft paw nudges his ankle.

“You’re just in time to hear her speak,” Rambleleaf says at his feet. “Can you lift me up so I don’t get stepped on? I want to see this too.” Gilbert kneels, allowing Ramble to hop onto his shoulder before embarking into the crowd, drawing closer and closer to the makeshift stage.

And then he sees her and all the pieces of his mangled heart slant together, restoring it in one, breathless moment.

“The Storygirl, ” Gilbert heaves quietly.

“That’s what we’ve taken to calling her here, too,” Ramble says.

His Storygirl hasn’t changed a bit. There are still halos crowning her smile and kingdoms of possibilities in her eyes. But the young dreamer and commander of words Gilbert had seen in the fields all those years had grown so tall and beautiful that he had no words left for himself—only a fiery warmth and an insatiable desire to talk to her.

“That’s Anne there?” Gilbert whispers to Ramble.

“Unmistakable, right?” Ramble murmurs back.

“I’m going to get closer.”

“Oh, good! I can’t hear from all the way over here,” Rambleleaf agrees, nudging Gilbert with his nose.

Gilbert collides with a few shoulders and elbows as he passes through, but only because he cannot tear his eyes away from her. He feels like the thirteen-year-old lad with weak knees and a pining heart all over again. When they’ve reached the makeshift stage, Ramble waves his tale to the Storygirl. The flash of white catches her attention and through the next words of her tale, she gives a dimpled smile and nod.

Then her eyes fall on Gilbert and her tongue stumbles. He watches her gaze travel from his heart-struck eyes, to his Avonlea clothes, to her boot in his hand. Anne chuckled and extended her bootless foot. Gilbert blinked down at it, the “Doctor” part of his mind wondering if she wanted him to examine it.

“The boot, Gilbert,” Ramble hisses in his ear.

“Oh! ”

Anne continues to keep the crowd enraptured in her tale even as Gilbert slides the boot over her lacy stockings and ties the laces. When he’s finished, she bends low to him and whispers, “Care to help me with my story?”

“Me ?” Gilbert chokes.

“Yes, Gilbert Blythe. You .”

A shiver shoots like a flash of summer lightning down his back. How does she know my name? Gilbert’s mind wonders on repeat. He feels himself nod, only to be swept up onto the stage with her strong hands a second later. She offers Ramble a hand down, pressing a kiss to the top of his fur, then turns back to Gilbert.

“Play along!” she murmurs quietly.

Gilbert nods once more, turning nervous eyes to the crowd of onlookers. Beside him, Anne shoots back into her carefully woven tale.

“It would’ve been easy for Cordelia to resign herself to the fate everyone wanted for her. But could she submit herself to everyday mundanities? Milking cows and pulling weeds? She could see the honor in these tasks, but somehow knew that her destiny laid elsewhere. She turned to a neighboring lad and asked him his thoughts.”

Anne grabs Gilbert’s fingers and poses her body as if engaged in a conversation with him. Her tongue stills, and she urges Gilbert to take the next few lines.

“Well, er…” Get it together, Blythe. He takes a deep breath. “The neighbor lad assured her that she bore enough heart and talent to succeed at any task she put her mind to. That it wasn’t a matter of finding her destiny, but...creating it? For herself.”

Anne smiles. Gilbert feels it thrum pleasantly behind his ribs.

“Cordelia asked the neighbor lad if he would help her find the better feelings of her heart, the truth behind her soul and desires.”

“He agreed,” Gilbert says resolutely. “Because the lad had already traveled across the world to find her. What was another journey?”

7. A Pair at Tea

“You must tell me how you managed to find me!” Anne exclaims, pouring sweet tea into two small stone goblets. Her hair is loose over her shoulders, and Gilbert wonders if it’s the reason for the raspberry, rose smell of her.

Gilbert hasn’t quite shaken the timid nervousness. This is how he imagines he might feel if he were engaged in conversation with the King of England—only Anne is much more beautiful, even if she is just as intimidating. His eyes follow her hands as she hands him his tea, and he accepts the offering as something to occupy himself with.

He ignores her question. For now, at least.

“How...how do you know my name?”

Anne smiles into her goblet.

“I’ve dusted your photograph hundreds of times helping Mary clean your home. You’re often all she can talk about when we’re polishing the silver or scrubbing windows.”

“Really?”

“Indeed. I know plenty about you, Dr. Blythe.”

“Just Gilbert is fine,” he hums, cheeks warm. Then his eyes dim and he stares at his own reflection in his tea. “What sorts of things do you know?”

Anne ponders this for a moment. Her fingers twist strands of hair into a gentle braid as she speaks, “I know that we just missed each other when we were children. That you left the island the same winter I arrived. I know that you’re the golden boy of Avonlea, and that all the mothers have been counting down the days until your return to marry their daughters to you. I know you won a prestigious scholarship that allowed you an excellent medical education. Congratulations by the way. I know—”

“ Alright !” Gilbert coughed. “I almost feel ashamed that I know barely anything about you. Only that you’re selflessly kind, a legendary master of storytelling, and that you’re unearthly beautiful.”

Roses flourish her cheeks in lovely shades of red. Gilbert bites his lip to keep from smiling.

“Anything you’d want to know, you only need ask. I’m an open book.”

“Then may I ask what it is you’re doing here?” Gilbert begins carefully. “The Cuthberts are worried sick. Bash and Mary, too. We all thought something terrible had happened to you.”

“Terrible? Why? I’ve only been gone nearly a day. I’ve disappeared for longer periods of time into Charlottetown to visit friends.”

Gilbert blinks.

“Anne, you’ve been missing for over a week. You came over to help clean the house a whole week ago.”

Her face shoots up to him.

“You must be mistaken. This isn’t my first time visiting Narnia. Time travels more quickly here than it does in Avonlea. That’s the way it’s always been.”

“All I know is what I’ve been told.”

Anne rises from the table, a hand over her mouth.

“A week? But...but how did you know where to find me?”

It’s Gilbert’s turn to blush, but he answers honestly.

“I think I accidentally stumbled upon Narnia as a boy, but always thought it was a dream or an imagination. When you went missing at my house, I just had this...feeling I couldn’t shake. I’m still having a hard time believing it, to be honest.”

“For a man of science, I think you are doing admirably,” Anne says warmly. “I admit, I stumbled here in a similar way. I was going to wash your fathers old things because they’d grown so dusty, but I tripped into the wardrobe.”

“That’s kind of you. To take care of my father’s things, I mean. Especially when you weren’t acquainted with him.”

“Mary told me he meant a lot to you,” Anne answers easily. “Besides, you’re a man now. I thought you might like to wear some of his things to help keep his memory closer by. I know I wish I could. Wear my mother’s dresses, that is.”

“Oh,” Gilbert frowns. “I apologize. I’d forgotten you’d lost your family too.”

“An unhappy sort of thing to have in common with someone, I’ll admit,” Anne replies, a sad smile on her lips. “But you and I both have our makeshift families now. And this new little friendship of ours. That brings me to this question, though, Gilbert. How long do you plan on staying?”

“How long do you plan to stay?” Gilbert replies, heart catching speed in his chest.

“For the duration of the match,” Anne replies, as if it were obvious.

“The...match?”

“Ramble didn’t tell you? There’s a Storytelling Match that’s taking place right now. Whomever can spin the best tale will get to tell a story to Aslan, the King of Narnia.”

“Ramble did say something about Aslan bringing you here for entertainment.”

“That’s only a guess,” Anne corrects warmly. “I’d like to win the match and meet Aslan, and then I plan to return home.”

Gilbert isn’t sure what to say next. The right thing to do is return home and explain as best he can the truth behind Anne’s disappearance. At the very least, fabricate some lie that assures everyone of her safety and inevitable return home.

But to his surprise, he finds he doesn’t want to leave. He wants to witness this storytelling match, support Anne and witness her victory. Maybe what Anne said about time in Narnia is right, after all. If they stay in Narnia for a while longer, perhaps it will be like no time has passed at all.

“Will you stay, Gilbert?” Anne asks quietly. “I know you’ve just met me and that we’re barely acquaintances. I won’t fault you if you return back home to your patients and to our families. But…”

“But?” Gilbert whispers hopefully.

“But if you’d like to stay for a while and explore Narnia with me, I would welcome the company. In fact, I’d be glad for it.”

“I’m so newly home that I don’t quite have patients yet,” Gilbert says offhandedly, mulling the idea over in his mind. “And there’s no guarantee that if I leave that I’ll ever be able to come back and see you. To make sure you’re alright.”

“There’s not,” Anne agrees, eyes glimmering with warm light.

He surprises himself with what he says next.

“Then I’ll stay.”

#anne of green gables #anne with an e #shirbert #shirbert fic #tessa writes #the truth always comes out in the tags and the truth is this #this was very hard to write #which is why it's a bit late #but i gave it 110%!!#so i hope you all enjoy it just the same #merry christmas and happy holidays to you all #i send all my love! <3

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merryfortune · 4 years ago

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Day 6 / Royalty

All The More to Love You With 2021

Event: @aiballshipping

Fandom: Yu-gi-Oh! Vrains

Ship: Ai/Yusaku

Word Count: 1.6k

Tags: Alternate Universe - Fairy Tales

Once upon a time, there was a boy with wide, green eyes and he was taken by forces unseen. Led into a glittering realm of freedom and whimsy. Where every day was dreamy and idyllic. For a young child, it was strange and paradisiacal. He played there, with them, those strange folk with long ears and eyes like jewels, in the flowers and ate well with them. Gorged himself on sweetmeats and desserts, it was all so good. But he was only allowed three days. Three days and he was returned to where he had came, yet when he was returned amongst the humans, it had not been three days that he been missing.

It had been six months.

And even though those memories were made in fantasy and delight, the experience changed this boy as it became difficult for him to adjust to the more mundane life of humans. The food was bad so he hardly ate and what he did, was in a farce of recreation of what he had eaten in the Hills and in the Mounds with the Fair Folk, glutted with sugar and syrup, whatever he could do to recapture the experience of that sweetness and that grease.

Aside from hungry, he became colloquially lazy. Unable to do things for long shifts and even though he did not dream, visiting the Fair Folk had stolen that away from him as well, at least in sleep his body did relax and it remembered what it was like to live in such sublime bliss and hedonism.

So, this boy became a young man who resolved to get back to that realm. He was more of them than he was of the humans he had been borne of. Everyone could tell, just from a look at him, that he had been spirited away as a child. There was an unnaturalness in his green eyes; a slender look in his body which hinted at unearthly beauty were it not for the clumsy humanness that he actually embodied.

Alas, the Fair Folk did not want to be found by him. He had to be found by them. He could traipse through the fields and forests all he liked, sashaying in and out of mushroom circles but it was for naught unless they wanted him back and apparently, they did not.

It was frustrating, to this young lad, Yusaku but he burnt with a quiet certainty, he would return, and he would not come back a second time. On the interim, he lived with the baker’s family and worked in their kitchens. The older son had taken him in under his wing; the younger son was similar to him in that he had been spirited away once by the Fair Folk as well but whatever he had seen, it had left him rattled to the core. Yusaku quietly understood, though. But it was a good working life regardless.

Working at the bakery was full of repetitive things. Grinding the flour, kneading the dough, putting into the oven and checking it at various intervals. It was the sort of work that Yusaku could keep straight in his head with plenty of time to rest since he was just like the yeast in that regard. It was a good little gig which rarely had Yusaku see the outside world when he didn’t want it as he was kept far behind the counter because his interpersonal skills were, admittedly, not all that great.

Hence why Yusaku found it quite unusual that something had gotten past all the foot traffic from out the front and made it all the way to back – and wasn’t a mouse, either. Then again, perhaps the little creature had come in through the window which was presently open and allowing a perfectly acceptable cool breeze but that would be odd too. It was cloudy but not stormy nor rainy and this little fellow that Yusaku had found was a frog and didn’t frogs prefer that sort of weather? It was even dryer in here so Yusaku went to scoop up the frog and let him outside.

Coming down to his knee, Yusaku was stopped with a realisation. This was a peculiar looking frog and he had been advised, once or twice, here and there, that the stranger a frog looked, the more poisonous it was. He curled a hand in the air and the frog looked up at him, all quizzical and innocent. He looked back at it scowling with thorough thought.

The frog had gleamingly yellow eyes and dark purple skin that made that gleam all the brighter. Like a glow. It had swirling patterns on its body which were a lighter purple than the rest of its skin. It stood, on all fours, toes pointed in, and was waiting to be rescued. It blinked. One eye and then the other, lazy, like a yawn.

Yusaku frowned and then found his voice, “I don’t think I should pick you up, little buddy.” He brought back in his hand and rested it on his knee.

“I think you should.” The Frog replied back to Yusaku.

“Huh.” Yusaku murmured.

He wasn’t all that taken aback by the talking frog. The frog seemed displeased with his utter lack of a reaction, its eyes bowed and furrowed with irked disappointment. It just so happened to be unfortunate that Yusaku had seen much stranger things in his mere ten and six years than talking frogs, much to the talking frog’s annoyance.

“Well,” the Frog began testily, “if that’s not a shock, then you’ll have no hesitation in fulfilling my actual request, I’ve come in search of thee and thee alone.”

“Interesting, interesting… but, suspicious.” Yusaku mumbled.

“I am the errant Prince from Across the Hills and Over the Mounds and in the Dark, in my wild ways, I have attracted much attention, both positive and negative. In a case of the latter, I now have a curse attached to me which has transformed me into a frog. The only way to undo this curse is with a kiss from a youth whose visited the Fair Folk before and lived to tell the tale. So, someone exactly like you.”

Yusaku hummed at hearing the frog’s tale. “I see. Very well then.” he said after mulling it over for what he thought was long enough.

“Really? Really truly?” the Frog gushed.

“Yeah, sure. Just a quick peck and you’ll be on your merry way, right?” Yusaku said.

“Well, I mean, I guess, if you don’t want to have any fun with it.” The Frog replied, scandalised.

Yusaku shrugged but against what was likely his better judgement, he took his hand off his knee again and scooped up the Frog. He was pleased that he didn’t feel anything like poison immediately seep through the skin of his fingers as he lifted the creature up. He swallowed a lump in his throat and the Frog lifted itself up slightly, lifted his head to him. Yusaku looked away, a scant blush in his sharp cheeks.

“This is ridiculous…” he muttered under his breath.

His nerves prickled when he heard the Frog make kissy noises at him. A frown bowed upon Yusaku’s brow. He was not known far and wide for having an amiable nature and he had never been curious either, kissing mirrors or whatnot so even if it was with a Frog, this would be a first kiss of any kind for him. Yusaku huffed.

“Let’s get this over with.” He muttered once more.

His head snapped back to in front of him and he rushed all into it just to get it over and done with. His lips locked with the Frog’s and he felt the distinct feeling of slime on his mouth. Yusaku clenched his eyes shut and he felt something on his eyelids. He grimaced and he had to let go of the Frog as he grew heavy.

He transformed in a blinding light and when Yusaku opened his eyes, he had to look up. A very handsome young man was now staring him down, toying with a stray curl of his wild mane of dark coloured locks, save for where it was streaked yellow. He smiled, coy and cruel with fluttering eyelashes.

Yusaku scrambled to his feet, “Y-You,” he stammered, “I know you, it’s you!”

The Frog, now transformed to the Prince like he claimed, laughed. “I don’t appreciate being pursued,” he purred, “I prefer to be the one doing the pursuing but I’m glad you remember me and my good looks after all these years.”

“How could I forget…?” Yusaku’s voice was quiet as he got over his dumb-foundedness. “You were the one who took me to that place.”

“And I hear you want to go back.” he said.

“I do.” Yusaku murmured.

“Well, as Prince Ai of the Unseelie Fair Folk, I dub thee… my crown consort.” He said with a wink.

Yusaku hazarded out a laugh. He thought that was a joke, but he wasn’t sure. He was too starstruck that after all these years, he’d finally reunited with the creature who had changed the course of his life. His heart was hammering in his chest and he was smiling with what was almost glee for the first time in ten years. Prince Ai couldn’t have looked more pleased with himself to have had that effect on Yusaku.

“Well?” Prince Ai prompted him, sticking out an arm yet keeping his hand on his hip rather firmly. “Shall we?”

“We shall.” Yusaku agreed and with quivering fingers, he did reach out and latch onto Ai’s offered arm.

#aiballshipping #aiballshipping week #aiballshipping week 2021 #yugioh vrains #vrains #yugioh #fujiki yusaku #yusaku fujiki #ai (vrains)#writing tag #all the more to love you with #all the more to love you with 2021

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queen-of-my-goofball-army · 3 years ago

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"There you are sweetheart, sorry I'm late, I was looking everywhere for you.

They say the best burn brightest when circumstances are at their worst." (Howl's Moving Castle)

One of the first things that I was introduced to when I was three years old was the films by the incredible Hayao Miyazaki. Ever since then his story's of whimsy and beauty have taken my breathe away. His ability to use magic as a way to tell his story's is something that never fails to make me feel captivated by that world. So it would make sense that my favorite movie of his is a fantasy romance.

When I was seven years old I was visiting my dad's former friend Arielo and he loved anime. It was something that he had a lot of passion in and he decided during a trip where my parents and I visited him in Phoenix that he would show us a movie that would change my life forever Howl's Moving Castle. Even though I have seen every single Miyazaki film, this movie remains my favorite and has gotten the most rewatches out of me.

For those of you that have never heard of this movie or Miyazaki in your entire lives, allow me to be your educator. Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese anime director. He co-runs an animation studio that he makes his films at one of the most famous animation studios of all time Studio Ghibli. Outside of Disney, he has made some of the most famous films in children's media. There are so many movies that he's made and all of them are perfect examples of why animation is such an amazing medium as a whole. Howl's Moving Castle is a movie based off of the book of the same name. It's about a hat maker named Sophie who works a simple day to day life in her hat shop. One day when she's visiting her sister she meet's the wizard Howl as he saves her from some creepy soldiers. What she is unaware of is that the Witch of the Waste has her heart set on her. She turns Sophie into an elderly lady with a spell and Sophie finds herself in the castle that has spread so many rumors about it's existence. From there she meets a wide array of colorful and wonderful characters from everyone's favorite fire demon Calcifer, to the adorable trainee in magic Markl.

The beauty in this movie lies solely in so many places. It's animation is particularly stunning. It's one of those films that I could watch on mute and still find something to love in it. It's a beautiful movie where absolutely anything can happen. The use of magic is one of the most beautiful things that never fails to take my breath away. My favorite use is probably when Haku swallows Calcifer in the flashback.

These characters are some of the most iconic that Miyazaki has ever made. So is the story. I'm about to say some controversial thoughts but I did not love the book. I thought that Miyazaki took an average story and made it a thousand times better through his animation and through his way of building this incredible world. I could probably talk for hours about my favorite character in the film Sophie but we will save that for a later date.

Howl's Moving Castle is a movie that has been there for me ever since I was seven years old. It's been this escape to a world full of whimsy and beauty. I love the amazing atmosphere that the film can be. It's a beautiful movie that you can take away everything from. I grew to love the characters, the animation, and it's romance that went along with it.

#howl's moving castle #comfort movies #favorite movies

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candied-peach · 5 years ago

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ao3: “fire in my chest” (chapter two) rating: T warnings: depression, anxiety attacks, sympathetic deceit, sympathetic remus, roceit genre: hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending description: It’s pointless. He knows that much. (It’s not.) (song lyrics are from breaking benjamin’s “dance with the devil”)

-chapter one

chapter two

I believe in you, I can show you that I can see right through all your empty lies I won't last long, in this world so wrong

Roman's eyes meet Deceit's and even from here, he can see the panic bloom. The deceitful side steps back so fast, it's almost as if he's sunk out. Roman would believe he has, if not for the very faint whisper of noise that is Deceit's feet, running helter skelter down the hallway.

"Roman?" Logan asks in surprise. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," Roman lies. "I'm fine. I just realized I forgot something in my room. Excuse me a moment." And with that, he's gone, climbing up the steps as fast as he dares without drawing suspicion. As it is, he can feel Virgil's eyes burning into his back.

He doesn't know how he feels about Deceit. Truthfully, he never has. When he coined the term 'Dark Side,' it was with a twist of fanciful whimsy. He never expected it to catch on the way it did. He never thought it would be used to actually shun the others. They are all useful bits and bobs of Thomas, whether anyone wants to admit it or not.

Deceit's room looms ever closer, and as he draws near, he can see the door is tightly shut. The doorknob shines dully in the dim light, a beacon drawing him on, like a jeweled treasure chest in the Imagination. Roman swallows, plucking up his courage. He doesn't knock. He knows that Deceit won't answer.

Instead, he tries the knob and to his surprise, it opens easily. He slips inside, nearly scraping his hip on the door frame, and edges the door shut behind him.

"Get out," Deceit says dully, from his slumped and huddled position on the bed. He resembles nothing more than a yellow-framed puddle, riotous tendrils of red-tinged curl escaping from under the rim of his hat.

"No," Roman counters, as boldly as he can (which is not very, truth be told). "Why didn't you come downstairs?" Deceit barks out a laugh so harsh, it sends Roman staggering back a pace.

"Are you serious?" Deceit demands. "Do you really think I don't know?"

"Don't know what?" Roman asks, perplexed. Deceit looks up at that, and Roman can see that his human eye is red-rimmed and brimming with tears the other side hasn't let fall.

"I know when I'm not wanted, thanks," Deceit hisses.

"But Patton-" Roman starts. Deceit waves an airy hand, cutting him off mid-sentence.

"I know a pity invite when I see one," Deceit sneers, the bitterness in his voice so thick, Roman could choke on it.

"Then listen to my invitation," Roman says. His heart thumps in his ears, trembling like a baby bird ready to fledge. "I want you there." Deceit stares at him in slack-jawed surprise, obviously testing for the lie.

"It isn't a lie," Roman says. "I- I like seeing you. I like spending time with you."

"But why?" Deceit persists, and now it is his turn to look baffled, his snake eye glittering in the light. Roman thinks it looks especially beautiful, as do the scales trickling down his neck.

"Because you're you," Roman says helplessly. "You don't patronize my brother, I enjoy your sense of humor when you let yourself express it, I like listening in on your debates with Logan, even when I don't understand more than half of them, I just-" He flutters his hands, trying to express what he's never tried to put into words before. "I should be better at this," he says, biting his bottom lip in frustration. "But I'm afraid I don't have any practice."

"Any practice at what?" Deceit whispers. He's gone very still, like a statue has taken his place on the rumpled bed.

"Telling someone how much I like them," Roman says, his face burning like the sun has risen and set on the planes of his cheeks, breaking across the slope of his freckled nose. "How much I enjoy their company. How much I enjoy you."

"But you-" Deceit breaks off. "You hate me," he says, and he looks so lost, Roman's heart aches.

"I don't hate you," Roman says firmly, breathing all of his intent into the words. "I have never hated you. You- I treated you poorly, and I apologize. It is a poor prince who treats someone like the villain just because they are convenient. But even then, I never hated you."

"I'm afraid I don't understand," Deceit murmurs. Impulsively, Roman strides across the fluffy carpet, going down on one knee in front of the trembling half-snake side.

"Deceit," he says, and Deceit's head snaps up. His mouth quivers, and Roman can see the tip of one fang peeking out. "Would you do me the great honor of accompanying me to movie night?"

"But-" Deceit protests weakly. "The others-"

"If they have a problem with it, then we can have our own movie night," Roman insists. "If- if you want?"

A tentative smile blooms on Deceit's face, and Roman feels his heart warm.

"I would love to," Deceit says shyly.

It still takes a moment to coax Deceit back out of his room, but he trails docilely after Roman, hands loosely intertwined. This time, Roman guides him down the stairs. Logan looks up and gives them a quiet nod of approval and Roman can feel some of Deceit's tension dissipate.

"Did you find what you forgot?" Virgil asks, not looking up. Roman beams as he settles Deceit at his side, one arm wrapped around his shoulders.

"I certainly did," he answers.

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arthurian · 7 years ago

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Four Years Shy of a Love Everlasting

Pairing: Willow Moore Hale x Garrison Abbey Words: 2.6k Read this on AO3. Premise: Gillow ft “I can’t be brave without you”, requested by @garrisonabbey My requests are currently open!

WILLOW HALE

In the dark, I think the world seems like a much less scary place. When the light has faded into something dim, it becomes a curtain, sheltering you from your fears. Some people are afraid of the encroaching blackness, of the secrets it might hold, but I love it. I love that in the dark, truths do not frighten me. At least not here.

The after hours image of Superheroes & Scones is something close to ethereal, at least to my eyes. Outside the frosted windows, a few fans still linger, waiting to catch a glimpse of my celebrity brother and his wife, or their son. It’s commonplace, and within the hour even the most diehard of fans will fade away, urged home by the cold and the lingering hope that they can try again for a glimpse tomorrow. Inside, the lights are off save for the breakroom, giving just enough glow within the rows of comic shelves and red vinyl booths for me to see if I need to walk. The air is calm. Everything is quiet.

I love this place. I love that I can lose myself for hours between the shelves, drifting from one universe to the next while I escape my own to become something superhuman. I love that, despite my naturally clumsy nature, I could go behind the counter and make espressos and all manner of coffees and teas if I wanted. I love the way the red booths and polished tile look like they came from another time, like this place had history before we ever stepped foot inside. But more than anything else, I love the memories I made here.

Months ago, I met my brother (well, brothers, but I didn’t know that at the time) between rows of comics for the first time. Loren Hale is an intimidating sight to behold, Ryke Meadows even more so, but they welcomed me. They offered me a family and a home, and never pushed when I sought to prove that that was all I wanted. And behind the counter, where I work and laugh and spend the majority of my days, is where I met Garrison.

Maya was my first friend in Philly, but Garrison became my best friend. What a wild world it is, to be the shy girl who knocks things over and trips over her own tongue, who befriends the bad boy who’s never pictured life beyond the crushing confines of a gated neighborhood and expectations he never wanted to fulfill.

And what an even stranger world to think that that friendship moved onward and upward, and that now I sit side by side with a boy who never thought he’d be a good man, and hold his hand without fear.

What a wonderful world it is for me, simple Willow Hale, to love and be loved by Garrison Abbey.

“I still can’t believe you’re leaving,” Garrison sighs, and his thumb runs over the back of my hand in comfort. I’ve always wondered if he knows he does this, or if his desire to calm me is subconscious. “And I’m not going with you.”

The statement pulls at my stomach, but I try not to let it dampen the whimsy of this night. In three short days, I’ll be boarding a plane to London, gone for four years in college, and Garrison will be here, being mentored by Connor Cobalt. We’ve broached the subject before, but only in the shortest of bursts. Neither of us want to admit what it could mean. Four years is a long time. Feelings shift and change, and we’ll be meeting new people every day.

If I linger on it too long, I’ll be crushed by the anxiety of what ifs. The truth is, this week I am Garrison Abbey’s girl. He holds my hand and kisses my cheek and sends me gifsets he knows I’ll love when we’re sitting across from each other on my bed, just because he wants to see me smile. But a week, a month, a year from now, someone else could come along and capture his attention. There’s no certainty that Garrison will love me in four years. Logistically, I can’t guarantee that. But I’m learning not to be afraid.

Courtesy of Daisy, I have this theory. I believe that everyone is born with a purpose. Sometimes they’re grand. Some people are born to start revolutions and build impossible feats and become world leaders. And sometimes they’re small. Some people are born simply to exist for another person. Sometimes, your purpose to be a sister or a daughter, a friend or a lover. Sometimes, you’re born because maybe someone else wouldn’t meet their true potential without you.

And I believe, in turn, the ladder climbs. You raise one person to their true purpose, and they raise another, and they another, until a baby is born who will one day cure cancer or a invent a flying car or become a scientist who discovers life on other planets.

I believe that Garrison is my purpose. Or at least a part of it.

I squeeze Garrison’s hand, a small comfort I can offer. “You’ll be doing great things while I’m gone,” I tell him, because I believe it.

Garrison doesn’t see much in himself. He sees the boy he was before I met him, who frightened our friends and lived inside a well of rage so deep he saw no way to claw himself out. I try to remind him that while my brother offered him a rope, Garrison did all the hard work of pulling himself up. One day, I hope I won’t have to remind him. What I want most for Garrison is for him to believe in himself the way I believe in him. The way Lily and Lo and Connor and Daisy do. Even Ryke and Rose have taken to him over time.

“I do great things with you,” he murmurs, shifting closer but stopping before our shoulders touch. I can hear the sadness in his voice, the doubt. As I watch him, his Adam’s apple bobs with tense swallows, and I think if it wasn’t so dark, there might be a glassy film over his eyes. “You make me so much better. At everything. For everyone. What if I can’t be good fucking person without you?”

“You’re a much better man than you believe yourself to be,” I whisper.

I lean my head against his shoulder, answering his body’s subtle request for more comfort from my touch. His tense shoulders relax slightly with me pressed against him. I am a salve to his sore muscles, a cure for his aches and pains and tension. When he presses a kiss to my temple, I smile into the fabric of his t-shirt. Tender moments like this with Garrison are such precious things. I capture them like fireflies in a glass jar, admiring them for a moment before releasing them back into the world and trusting them to return to me.

“Tell me something that will make me feel better about weird English guys hitting on you when I’m not there to intimidate the shit out of them,” he sighs, trying to lighten the mood and asking for reassurance at the same time. Only with me, and very rarely with Lo, does he let himself be this vulnerable.

“If weird English guys hit on me, I’ll tell them I’m sorry, but I’m Garrison’s girl,” a blush creeps up to my cheeks. After all this time, I still flush with embarrassment with declarations like this. “And he’s waiting for me.”

Garrison goes still, and for a blinding moment my heart races, worried I’ve said the wrong thing. My relationship with Garrison is a parade of firsts. I’m learning everyday, navigating a new world. I don’t know if there are rules. Where I should bend and where I should stay firm. Do I say what I feel, or express it with my actions? I am always twisting with anxiety, pondering what I’ve said and done and praying I did it right.

Garrison’s arms twine around me, careful and slow until I nuzzle further against him in permission for this embrace, and my worries ebb away. So rarely are they wounded in truth. I think Garrison finds my confusion endearing. I think he likes being my first everything, even if I’m embarrassed by my lack of knowledge on a daily basis.

“You know I’ll wait for you, right?”

My heart goes still. I think, deep down, I wanted to hear these words from him, but refused to let myself ask for them. I want to hear them because they bring me a temporary comfort, the kind that soothes the raucous pulse of my heart into something closer to a melody that wants to be sung, played out by the soft thrums of each beat. I want him to wait for me. I want to believe that those words will hold true for the whole four years I’ll be gone.

I’m trying hard not to be scared. I know what Daisy and Lo and Ryke and even my dad have all told me. That they hope against hope that Garrison and I are in for the long haul. That we’ll defeat the odds. But they’ve prepared me too. First loves are the hardest. Not everyone meets their soulmate when they’re still children. Not everyone falls in love once and never has to go searching again.

I’ve kept my heart open, because I want to believe the best of Garrison and me. Even in my creeping moments of doubt, where I’ve thought maybe I should stay in Philadelphia and not give up this boy who makes my heart sing and brings strength to my limbs and loves me even when I cry and crumble and shift anxiously on my feet.

The truth is that I don’t want us to be a maybe. I don’t want us to be an almost. But the even bigger truth is I don’t want to be a maybe or an almost either. College - I have to do this for me. For the future I can make for myself. I have to make this choice and hope that the us can survive it. Garrison and I - we’re four years shy of a love everlasting, and I need us to hold on until our fingers give out.

So much of me is entwined with this city, with this store we sit in, with this boy holding me like he wishes we were made of the same soul. Willow Moore is not the same girl as Willow Hale. I’ve discovered what it means to be me. I’ve learned how to open my mouth and ask for what I want and stand on my own. And I owe so much of that courage to Garrison.

My silence stretches too long.

“What are you thinking?” Garrison murmurs. There’s anxiety in his voice, and I don’t like that I’ve put it there.

My mind is racing, memories flipping through like leaves on the wind, beautiful and captivating. I am thinking of all the times Garrison held out a hand and waited for me to take it, towing a boundary but letting me cross it. I am thinking of conversations in the dark, a phone pressed to my ear while we whisper dreams too private to greet the daylight. I am thinking of the shell I lived in my whole life, slowly suffocating me, until Garrison stepped forward and offered to peel away a piece every day until I was ready to greet the world head on.

“I’m thinking - I’m thinking that I don’t know how to be brave without you,” I tell him, and I can feel his body shake with the weight of my words. “I’m thinking I want us to learn how to stand on our own. You can continue to be good without me here to remind you of what you’ve already proven to be true, and I can stand up and make my way through the world without needing you to push me forward when I’m scared.

“I believe you believe you’ll wait for me.” Garrison opens his mouth to argue, but I push forward anyways, not letting him interrupt. I can tell it upsets him in a way, but I can also tell he’s proud of me for not letting myself go unheard. “And I hope we can. Maybe we’re better together than we are apart. But we have to find out how to stand on our own first. Think of this as our origin story.”

Garrison laughs around the hitch in his throat. His voice is thick as he asks, “Are we borrowing Lily and Lo’s superpowers?”

For a moment, I pause to think about that. Lily and Lo always joke about superpowers, but I remember their real ones. That their superpowers are loving each other. Their love story is one I think I’ll tell my kids someday. How my brother loved a girl so much, he nearly buried himself beneath the weight of it, but how in the end that love was so strong that it gave them both the strength to bend worlds and raise new ones.

And I think of Rose and Connor. And Daisy and Ryke. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing three great love stories. Ones anyone would be lucky to have.

I just don’t want them for myself. I don’t want to be Lily and Lo, or Rose and Connor, or Daisy and Ryke. I want to be Willow and Garrison. Whatever that entails.

“No,” I reply. “I’m sure they’d let us, but I think we should discover our own.”

“And what do you think our superpowers are?”

“I don’t know. We’ll have to find them along the way, I guess.” My voice drifts off.

I don’t want to think about three days from now. Or the four years after. I want to live right now. I want to think about how here and now and today, I am in love with boy and he is in love with me. Our love story, I don’t want it to be about how it ends, or how it doesn’t. I want our love story to be about the journey. I want people to think, Willow and Garrison, well that was quite the adventure.

“What if -” I begin hesitantly, but find the strength the raise my voice. With his skin pressed against mine and the dark of the night cloaking us like a blanket, I am braver than I have ever been. “What if we don’t think about the future? What if we just promise to what we’ve always done? Take it day by day.”

Garrison’s silence stretches long, but I don’t worry. I like that if I close my eyes and listen very carefully, I imagine I can hear him thinking.

We were two lost souls, wandering a plane of existence without seeing the path. Now, we are found, painting our way bright red to show everyone how far we’ve come. I don’t know what’s around the next corner. I don’t want to know until I get there. The greatest thing about this discovery, about lighting the path and finding your way, is stopping to enjoy the view.

And I want to admire this one. Us. Wrapped up in one another, in the place where we met and built a friendship and then something more. I think we might be something beautiful to behold.

“Day by day,” Garrison agrees. “And Willow?”

“Yeah?”

“Today, I am embarrassingly in love with you.”

#addicted #addicted series #gillow #willow moore #garrison abbey #willow hale #kbmritchie #fic #callowaynetwork #request*#writing*

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hardasstein · 7 years ago

Photo

Story time~

Shark!Jotaro au belongs to @sunsetfemke

Too early, or too late. He wasn’t sure which one to think, but it was just too something. Because holy shit it was one in the morning and Kakyoin hated how tired he felt as he walked. He trudged his way down the shore line, dragging his tired feet through the coarse grain of the sand on the beach. When he and Jotaro had met up earlier and hung out, Jotaro had told him he had something he wanted him to see. When Kakyoin asked him about it, and what it was, the shark had told him that he wouldn’t show him until later in the night, and when asked why, the answer was because he couldn’t. To say Kakyoin was confused would be an understatement. Jotaro then told him to come back to their spot in the early hours of the morning, the best time being around one. And now here he was, not at all excited to be walking around in the dark of the night.

Oh yeah, it was recommended by his boyfriend that he not bring a flashlight because it would, “take away from his experience.” What did he even mean by that? Doesn’t really matter at the moment, his focus more on avoiding stepping on any spurs, rocks, shells or any living creature. He was feeling around all of the rocks for any familiar scratching along the rocks, from Jotaro’s claws when he pulls himself up out of the water. He was also doing his best to avoid any tide pools that may have surfaced during the night, not wanting any unplanned occurrences with any strange creatures that night. He already had one planned one, so no thanks.

When his fingers brush over the familiar grooves in the rocks surface, a grin splits his face and he leans against it, instead pressing his back to it and deciding to wait until Jotaro came to him. He could feel the chill of the rock, that has soaked in the cool night air, through his suit. He looked up to the crescent shape of the moon, the sliver of white in the black very slight and barely gave off any light. The shimmer of it off of the inky black darkness offered a hint of serenity to the mysterious danger of the ocean at night. He also felt like had been waiting for ages and was starting to fall asleep against the rock and knew he would hate himself in the morning if he fell asleep by the ocean again.

He sighed and cupped his hands around his mouth to carry his voice over the gentle crash of the waves against the shore.

“Jotaro! Where are you? Are you here?” He called out, looking around and listening for any noise that would give away his fishy lover.

“Yes, I’ve been here for some time now.”

The voice came from behind him, up on the rock he had been laying on and it almost scared the piss out of him. The redhead turned around quickly and looked up at the top of the rock, eyes wide as he takes in the dark shadow of a moving shape atop the rock. Two eyes, or what Kakyoin assumed to be eyes, but they looked more like a cat’s eyes when they shine in the dark. He had no idea that shark ha that as well. Kakyoin would’ve been angry, but he was more spooked than anything, a pout taking shape on his lips instead.

“So you instead just let me sit here, in the cold, getting cold? When it could’ve saved us both some body heat? Aren’t you getting cold?” He asked, huffing a breath out his nose as those eyes kept staring right down at him. When the other made no gesture to move, even slightly, Kakyoin decided to himself. He shifted to get a better grip on the rock and try to pull himself up onto it to join Jotaro up there, so he could at least try and see whatever it was the other had him come all the way out here for in the middle of the night, during the cool and chilly weather and the darkest time. It was then the other moved, and he moved to even stop Kakyoin from getting up there with him. Jotaro put his hand on Kakyoin’s shoulder and put a little force behind the press, keeping the man there instead.

“No, stay there.” Jotaro’s voice came smoothly and yet commandingly, rumbling out of his chest as he blinked downto Kakyoin, and it only seemed to add to the confusion and curiosity that Kakyoin was already brimming with.

“Why? Don’t you have something to show me? How can I view it from down here if you are up there?” The redhead was looking wide eyed to the shark, his brows furrowed in almost frustration. His eyes were searching for some kind of answer, a sign, anything. He was even trying to catch the outline of an item near or on Jotaro. Nothing, just those bright, shining eyes in the dark. Almost like stars.

“No, you’ll be able to see just fine from down there, don’t worry.” Came an almost gentle reply from the larger, and then Kakyoin could see him start to move up there. Shifting on the rock, he could see the others claws scratching over the hard surface, leaving new marks along it. He positioned himself in such a way, and when he stopped, it took only the blink of an eye and a flash of movement and he was gone. Right into the ocean.

And it. Was. Mesmerizing.

The water that came up and around the others large body shimmered and shone around Jotaro as he dove in. Ethereal light flew around and splattered into the water, light flecking along the surface as his boyfriend resurfaces. Kakyoin was at a loss for words, completely blown away.

“Kakyoin, are you alright? What did you think?” The Shark asked, but not really needing to as he looks over Kakyoin’s face and can see the exact words that were buzzing around in his head. His lips twitched a little bit as he swam back up to the shore, noting his his human’s eyes were more focused on the vibrant colors shining against his tail with each stroke of it through the water.

“What is that, it’s so..” Kakyoin’s voice was small and soft, and his brain could produce so many words to try and describe the vibrant shimmer in the ocean that lit up the dark, but nothing seemed good enough, nothing did it justice. It looked like magic, and KAkyoin was having trouble wrapping his head around it.

Jotaro could only laugh softly at the child-like whimsy that was very evident on the others face, and shining in his eyes, He pulled himself forward and back onto shore to gently take the others hand in his larger one. Kakyoin turned his attention down to Jotaro, pulling his focus from the water as the green faded and the otherworldly shine came back to Jotaro’s eyes.

“Then come in with me.” The shark proposed in his soft rumble, squeezing the smaller hand in his own.

“What?” Kakyoin’s eyes widened a bit at the proposition before looking back out to the inky abyss. The prospect of getting into the water after the sun down was a bit of a shock and struck something more primal in Kakyoin. Something that screamed danger deep in his blood. His hand clenched a bit in Jotaro’s larger palm and the shark squeezed it gently to try and ease the tension from him curiously. Kakyoin turned his focus back to Jotaro and he could see the curiosity in those bright eyes that shone in the dark. Kakyoin swallowed the lump in his throat and spoke up again.

“Get in there this late? Something could get curious and come up, poke or bite.” It all kinda tumbled out of his mouth, and Jotaro could only cock a brow at him.

“And what would be so curious as to attack us?” The other’s tone seemed to be a bit more firm than the curious one he had taken on in his look.

And he was right, Kakyoin hadn’t really let it sink in that he was holding hands with one of the top predators in the ocean. What has a large e nough death wish to swim right up to a Great White and try to take a bite out of it and it’s little human passenger? The prospect of a night swim really lost all of its scariness and fear when you go swimming with a shark, at least when you’re Noriaki Kakyoin.

Kakyoin squeezed his hand and smiled to him, letting himself be pulled into the chilly blackness.

“Oh my God this is freezing, Jotaro!” He was quick to lean fully into Jotaro’s larger frame, the shark’s skin always a flame with natural warmth. “How can you live..” His snarky comment died off quickly as he eyes were caught by that mystical glow, now so close he was literally touching it. He raked his fingers a little rough through the surf and when the blue lit up in the trail of it, that awed smile reappeared on his face and he was once again speechless.

Jotaro kept their hands together, holding ot him as he watched Kakyoin wade out up to his waist, the man’s eyes fixed on the glow. The look in his eyes reminded Jotaro of a young pup getting to lay eyes on a whale for the first time and it made Jotaro’s heart and stomach clench up in the most delightful of ways.

“This is what you wanted to show me?” Kakyoin only spoke up again when they were out past the sandbar, the human now straddling across Jotaro’s belly like a surfboard, the shark leaned back comfortably, swishing his tail lazily and his arms gently splashing to keep the gentle glow continuous for his human boyfriend. “Jotaro this is so beautiful.” He spoke softly, his hands coming up to cup the other’s cheeks, smiling happily. Jotaro shifted to sit up so they were closer, his hand rubbing up the wetsuits back the rough skin of his hands scratching up it lightly in a way that made Kakyoin shiver slightly, but the smile never faltered. He cradled the human closer to himself as he nodded.

“Thank you for this Jotaro.” He said softly, pressing their foreheads together, their breaths mingling and warm in the chill of the night and Jotaro only smile just a little more, nuzzling their noses gently, a giggle bubbling up and out of Kakyoin.

“It’s actually plankton.” Jotaro explained, looking to the gentle glow that framed their bodies in the water. “It’s a defense mechanism of theirs, a bioluminescence to try and ward of any predator that would want to try and eat them, trying to convince them that they are actually poisonous, and..” And he was off, almost lecturing Kakyoin on the plankton. And Kakyoin loved it. Jotaro’s eyes it up again, but in a different way, and he loved it. When Jotaro got excited and chatty about the ocean , it was so amazing.

The human shifted on the shark to get more comfortable, laying his head down on his shoulder, just right next to the others gills, seeing them twitch and flutter as the other talked, and it made him smile just all that more. He got this inspired aura around him, and this cute little look on his face.

Jotaro was swimming gentle circles around the surface, body rocking gently and chest rumbling with his words, blood warm and it was all just so soothing to the tired man. Kakyoin yawned softly and closed his eyes as he continued to listen, Jotaro now going on about squid he’s seen that share similar properties. Kakyoin nuzzled his face into his shoulder, curling up on him and letting himself be lulled off.

And if he could he would fall asleep like this every night. With his warm, safe shark bed and his living night light.

#tadaaa #jotakak #shark!Jotaro #Jotaro Kujo #Noriaki Kakyoin #I love this shark boy #I love sharks and he's a good boy #jjba

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ratherhavetheblues · 5 years ago

Text

INGMAR BERGMAN’S ‘SUMMER INTERLUDE’ “Get the lead out, little lady!”

Way back, when Ingmar Bergman was a hack by necessity, he found himself (being an acute student of Hollywood flutter) ready at last (around 1950) to speak his piece. The vehicle he chose for this debut, namely, Summer Interlude (1951), involves all the treachery and emotional violence mowing us down for the next forty years. Although his portfolio would include marvelous instances transcending destruction, those marvels would be hedged in a way that protracted evil would seem to triumph on planet Earth. But what is planet Earth but a sick puppy in face of the infinite potential of the cosmos? In the days of Summer Interlude, however, we should not neglect the singularity of heartiness putting in a dynamic (perhaps) never to be seen from him again. This singularity is the special gift and the special task of our film today.

Whereas, at the outset of a saga like Bergman’s Cries and Whispers (1972), there is a piercingly beautiful rendition of the grounds of a large estate in early morning light, only to become promptly swallowed up by vicious interaction and horrific physical decline and death, the tyro matter goes to sheep-dog persistence to show us that an agency of uncanny love is very much in the mix. Not being able to deploy (as with the film of 1972) remarkable chromatic effects, our preamble reveals an estate of some opulence, rich foliage including daisies in bright sunlight and gentle breezes, benign white clouds and, particularly, a body of dancing water with a rocky shore to be displaced with the sea looking back toward the now distant structure, touched by a carefree flute motif. (The last detail to note here, is three chevron-form windows at the mansion’s upper floor. That they resemble jaws as well as a formation of dialectics indicates how early Bergman’s instincts for synthesis were in play.)

Plunging right through that whimsy, only to engage more whimsy, there is the harbor of Stockholm and its flotilla of tour boats and ferries to be supplanted by a bicycle parked at a curb while leaves dance along the sidewalk. Promptly we enter a ballet theatre and its hubbub, which could have shattered the intuitive dance. That it doesn’t, has to do with the two ancient, long-term office functionaries, first seen receiving a package for the prima ballerina, Marie, and shooing off a reporter claiming, “She’s [Marie’s] expecting me.” With this mundane buzz, there emerges, by way of the courier/ messenger, a surprise: “What’s that smell?” Though the more assertive sentry claims that there is no smell, there is the delivery boy pressing the case, “You’ve lost your sense of smell, friend.” (With that, the discoverer pushes his hat into a rakish angle. This action tends to confirm that the reporter—his tabloid called, “The Year Round,” being about the usual—is dressed to resemble a whimsical and eccentric Hollywood detective with his trench coat and rakish fedora.) The smaller of the two sentries comes to life with, “Something does smell funny!”—something in the air we should take seriously. The rotund top-cop loses his temper about that volatility and yells out, “That may well be, but no outside brat’s gonna be telling me that! I’ve worked at this theatre for 40 years…” An in-crowd shaping up, disinclined for change. The delivery to “Miss Marie,” by the second-in-command, becomes another rakish motion, this time not so tacky as the poses of American tough guys. The boss-sentry rips open the curtain behind which he directs traffic and instantly there is the little old flunkey ripping open Marie’s dressing room and presenting her with the package. The shock of that gusto links to the mysterious “smell,” invading the ordinary with a type of acrobatics. (Here we have the comedic outset of what will become, in The Seventh Seal [1957], a blue-chip uprising against arrogant insiders.) In support of noticing that a dance is in force, somewhat supplanting the rigid activity of the ballet, we have a number of dancers in tutu costumes, seen from below on a rather precipitous catwalk down flights of narrow stairs. Almost simultaneously with that rush to a dress rehearsal, we hear a loud, grinding noise filling the hall. This also coincides with Marie’s opening her package to be jolted by the diary of a former lover who died while she watched him carelessly dive into a rocky seaside, along a trajectory of compromising distraction and superficiality which he—not she—could have averted. This unexpected arrival eclipses the work in progress. With everyone in place except her, many of the bemused run to the sense that Marie is losing her grip. We hear, “Something’s going on with Marie. Everyone says so!” (A cut to the stage curtain, and it strikes us as dark and fussy with frills.) Marie is induced to return to be a team artist, but her escort, one of the many support staff needed to satisfy a pedantic culture, worries, “There’s something strange in the air today! I told the missus so when I woke up. The weather and all, and I had a strange dream… Something’s going to happen, I feel it coming…” After a short passage with the premiere (the dancers performing the ballet, Swan Lake) and during an expectant musical thrust, the lights go out.

The on-again, off-again lighting is “some king of glitch,” necessitating an evening dress rehearsal. But the “glitches” we’ve just experienced speak to an agency—always there but seldom noticed. Surely the arrogant ballet master alerting Marie that there is to be a lull in the workplace that day and going on to be viciously rude toward an elderly woman helper of the dressing room, would be missing in action regarding that agency. (He tells the ballerina, “I’m cool.” But no one’s fooled about that, since cool is the medium of disinterestedness, also known as acrobatics.)

We’ll follow how Marie spends that rest, and whether she amounts to anything better than the laughable wannabe. She goes out, but before that she stops at the phone booth at the doorway, to connect with the man from “The Year Round” [the everyday, the common]. She can’t reach him. But can she reach the pattern of meteor-passes on the phone booth glass? On hearing from the decades-long bouncer that he had bounced her date, she spits out, “They should send you packing!” That being exactly the register of the “cool” one. The hapless doorman remarks, “There’s something hard about her.” Marie bumps into the person of interest while yawning, and meandering along a sidewalk. She complains to him, “I’m tired because you won’t let me sleep at night.” Thus, ensues a bitter row about preoccupation with career, culminating with him telling her, “I can’t stand old sourpusses!” She has carried along the diary, and when, at the docks, passing a tour boat ready for an excursion, she is rallied by a crewman calling, “Get the lead out, little lady! Are you coming or not?” She can’t resist a bid to shake things up, to recapture what she imagines to have been the heights of love. A sprightly harp motif joins her windfall along with the sunny sky and lovely seas, in addition to a white wake and white smoke from the chimney, conspiring with the white clouds. She enters a precinct of thrilling space, serenity and its brave instincts. Pensive, while the boat skirts a forest, she could be seen to be an artist of vast promise.

On reaching her destination, she finds the key to a small and decrepit cabin, where she sits on a dusty cot. She closes her eyes and recalls a summer day 13 years before, when she graduated into the corps de ballet, by way of a celebratory performance. “A day like no other day of the year!” But she had to include, within this treasure of skill, the complaint, to one of the trainers, “That was awful! The orchestra played too slow…” Her listener replies, “Don’t try that one…” [to cover errors by blaming others, resorting to place others at a disadvantage]. She then shifts the advantage game to the form of, “It didn’t go well…” [I’m a perfectionist without peers]. The more mature correspondent here covers the cut-throat’s vanity with, “No, but you were brilliant…” All he gets in reply is, “I’m going home to have a good cry.” Frustrated, his retort is, “You do that.”

Marie may have been in the spotlight here. But her account includes another male backstage, smitten by her sensuous presence and early authority. He’s quickly disposed of by the larger sentry, before being introduced. But we should know right now (before succumbing to overkill from the measure of wholesomeness this movie packs) that Marie, for all her impressive resolve, is locked, as is most of the population, into life-long superficiality, with occasional faint hope being to no avail. And yet, this Bergman standby will in fact be tempered—not simply, as with the usual drama over the years, a demolished gem—by a perpetual vector of efficacy (a glitch), notwithstanding having been virtually never taken out on the road. Whereas the young admirer, far more capable of real artistry and power than she, will die in the course of taking her too seriously, he will have deposited, in his diary, the wherewithal (and he is not alone in this challenge) to shut down a gigantic farce. We do need to notice and celebrate the many upbeat moments, because their sunniness is quite unique in the works of Bergman. And thereby we are enmeshed in a critique: on the order of loosening up (somewhat) the good stuff.

Out she goes (in her reverie), on the same boat she would use after the quarrel with the reporter, for her summer holiday, and who should be seated next to her but Henrik, the finder of celestial apparitions. She remarks (not exactly a calling card), “It’s cold.” His shy and awkward reply is, “Are your legs cold, miss? I mean, since you’re a dancer…” He goes on to declare, “You’re the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen in my life.” After sorting out each of their positions on the Stockholm Archipelago, the impressiveness of Marie’s home takes precedence. He jokes, “Yeah, the Manor. Gruffman [his large poodle] and I used to raid the orchard there.” This brings out more coldness in the ballerina: “Perhaps our paths will cross, if only if you come to raid the orchard,” she stakes out a far from equitable intercourse.

Now that we’ve floated the crisis (a much lower key than that of, say, The Passion of Anna (1969), we’re treated to Marie’s susceptibility to cogency when alone and heeding “glitches.” She wakes up on the cot to be welcomed by a foursome of intense squares of light upon the wall. (The makings of a twosome without attitude?) She hums a happy tune while putting on her bathing suit, and then she opens wide her arms to the sun. She carries a long fishing pole to her rowboat at the dock, and we regard her smoothly rowing from a seagull’s perspective, which is also the perspective of disinterestedness. Who knew? We’re treated here to a play of rallies, the likes of which are very rare in the Bergman catchment. She drops anchor, puts a worm on her hook and falls asleep in the molten sun. A cuckoo sings. (No matter that her endeavor here comes to naught. This film has opened up a very long-term payoff.) The splash of Henrik’s diving into the waters nearby wakens her to a divided result. She is amused by his whimsy; but also displeased to feel exposed that she can’t handle the rigors. “Hello, again,” she takes up a form of pecking order. “Swim, miss?” he invites, perhaps having taken umbrage with her seeing him as a thief. “Too cold,” she maintains. “Try,” he argues, all smiles. And therewith Marie finds a way to put him at a disadvantage. “Think we could drop the formalities?” the modernist tweaks the old-fashioned. She takes further control by asking, “Do you like wild strawberries?” And away they go, with a harp fanfare, to her place. “No one knows about it.” While they are enjoying the treats, a bird calls so furiously that she becomes confused. He shrugs it off with, “I usually call it the summer vacation bird.” (One other aspect of the wild things in this skirmish is Gruffman, the dog, in the process of losing his special fluency with the boy.)

As the summer goes very wrong, Marie makes a point of having nothing to do with Gruffman’s equilibrium. On hearing from the college boy of his having been shunted off by his divorced father to a rich and hateful aunt, Marie tries to bring to bear her vision of soaring virtue. “I love blind kittens, don’t you? And babies… And people that other people think are ugly. And mice, of course.” (How close to Anna, the martinet of “Security,” in the film, The Passion of Anna, is Marie?) As an afterthought formality, she adds, “and poodles.” How much did she care about Gruffman? After Henrik’s death, she demands having the deep creature put done, with the slimy concern, “The poor thing shouldn’t have to live” [in malaise].

Henrick’s not feeling that his concerns are getting across to her—“It’s just that people don’t take me seriously…”/ “Oh dear,” she chuckles, “is it really as tragic as that?”—prompts him to declare, “No one cares about me but Gruffman…”/ “Really,” she mocks./ “No,” he insists, “only Gruffman!” The conversation continues to fall short of serious connection. “What about me? Do you care about me? Would I have brought you here if I didn’t?” is her infantile rationale./ Even a freshman could smell that glitch. He politely replies, “I’ll have to give that some serious thought.” Serious thought, about a gulf, crashes into him immediately, by her happy face, “I’m never going to die.” Not content with pushing around the population, Marie has no qualms about pushing around the cosmos. And before leaping to the conclusion that she’s a dancer, period, we should be alert to the possibility that her moments of vision at the beginning of the morning might just touch upon an agency—far from about forever alive—which could move a headstrong dancer-laborer to recognize that powers do surpass and sustain mere human physiology right up to a right death. “I may get really, really old, but I’ll never die.” Henrik, after fielding this matter of incredible self-concern, shares his very different sense of “serious thought.” “While, I’m scared… Scared that I, Henrik, will suddenly fall over the edge into something dark and unknown.”/ “Why do you talk like that?” she complains. He explains, “The feeling just comes over me [a glitch], clear as can be…” He smiles, having in fact reached the same territory of Marie’s gratitude; but from another, more visceral angle. “But it’s interesting, don’t you think?” Henrik looks for a link. She smiles uncommittedly. But she does manage to maintain, “Hey, Henrik, I think we’re going to be friends.”/ “I think so too,” he hopes. (Here, we should delight in the helmsman’s great craft in theatrical dialogue, casting light where darkness has prevailed.)

This high ground proves to lack traction. Here she is, back to her default zone at the estate, receiving, from a rich uncle who hopes to bed her one day, an expensive bracelet. This Uncle Erland, an amateur classical pianist of some finesse, grows his hair patrician-long; and, in the midst of it, he installs two strands of white curls which set the table for the kind of synthesis Marie and Henrik struggle to master. Erland, teased by Marie that he lusted for her now-deceased mother, trains his rationale toward a supposed supernal gift which Marie’s actress-mother possessed. Marie, in her most sustained register, teases and triumphs, “And is the bracelet a token of my artistry?” Her uncle, frequently drunk, advises, “We’d run away, you and I… and live life to the fullest… seize the moment and hold it tight…” In reply, she maintains, “I already seize the moment and hold it tight.” Her patron dismisses that arrogance, telling her, and laughing, “You think so, poor dear? Lucky the man who will teach you. There’s so much to life…” The lunch dissolves with her coquetry, seen often, no doubt, at many affairs. But rushing to the traction involving Henrik, , she finds that he had been once again trespassing and overhearing the minor cynicism. (Erland’s wife, regarding with him her racing off, states, “She’s run off, dear Erland, and you can’t catch her.” Sometime after the death of Henrik, he will reel her in, for a while.) A frosty new friend greets her, and Gruffman doesn’t even look her flighty way. She uses the dog as a ventriloquist’s doll: “Gruffman, why’s he mad?” Clearing the air, she refers to the gift-giver as merely “an old codger,” and adds, once again, “Is it as tragic as all that?” She cuddles up, and then pushes him into the nearby waters. “I got you!” she adds. A cut reveals the three returning in his canoe. Her voice-over, covering the scene as Henrik wrote in his diary, emphasizes, “One night, after a scorching summer day of blazing sunlight, there was an immense silence that reached all the way up to the starless vault of heaven… The silence between us was immense as a well…” Hopping gracefully from one small purchase of the treacherous surface to another, she induces Henrik to follow suit, which he does. (Two forms of poetry.) The friends lie on their bellies upon the flat rocks. She adds, “The rocks are still warm. His contribution—“Everything seems unreal tonight, don’t you think?”—elicits from her, “It’s beautiful” [beautiful as a bracelet?]. A small “glitch” having come to concentration for her, brings to her: “We’re inside the same bubble… It’s so beautiful I could burst, break into pieces and disappear without a trace [“I’ll never die” a poor fit for this understanding]… You know, kissing must be fun…” His response, “Must be, since everybody’s doing it” [in sexy Sweden], once again doesn’t find them on the same page. He thinks out loud, “Everything’s so difficult, and all connected somehow… Marie, I like you. I’m in love with you, and all that… I mean… You must think I’m stupid. I’m just a damned fool. A damned coward!” And once again she drops the ball. “How does it feel?” she asks. (Not the big picture; but, “How am I doing to brighten your melancholy?”) “What?” he wonders, is she talking about. She clarifies, “You said you’re in love with me.” He, wanting to drop the subject going nowhere that could work for him in her context, puts out a slap-dash cliché, “You feel it in your chest and stomach.” This brings her to the failing of poetry, and she laughs at him. Having a miserable time expressing the subject by duress, he struggles with a quicksand of language. “You’re knees feel like they’re full of applesauce, and your toes curl up. But it’s mostly in the chest.” (Bergman’s ironic bite here involving a possibility to make amends, given long enough time to live. She, facile most of the time, amends, “In the heart.”) “I don’t know what,” he puts an end to the revealing farce. But he politely asks, “What about you?” She, having been accorded all her life the license to duck out of conundrums, rudely shoots back, “Who said I was in love with you?”/ “You’re right,” he acknowledges—and this would have been his cue to do something else during his vacation. But from her perspective there was nothing more interesting here than toying with reflection. She comes up and puts his arm around her shoulders. “I think it’s in my skin,” she gets around to replying to his asking about the subject. “I want you to touch me and stroke my skin with your hands…” As he moves to kiss her, she rushes away, whips out a cigarette, hands it to him and they proceed to toss flat stones into the inlet. Far from the creative acrobatics stalking this film, the rippling of the waters doesn’t catch fire. Then they canoe, and their return is bemusing. She marches straight on to the dock, leaving the more evolved two to bring the awkward craft to steadiness. Their land route passes cherry blossoms and a peacock, but they meet the beauty with less than incisiveness. (Traction missing.)

Now both of them needing a new outlook on life, they visit the salon of the estate of Erland. “He’s probably a bit drunk, but don’t worry about,” are the opening notes by her aunt. They sit on a polar bear rug, and listen to Erland tell of, “Your mother, Marie, used to dance for me on evenings like this… when it was quiet and still, and moonlight filled the room …” (Less than celestial? Or once celestial?) He moves on to, “Now all the clocks in the house have stopped… We were alive in those days…” Marie escorts Henrik to the garret room where she is supposed to work out every day, during the closure of the ballet. Here Marie, in voice-over, reads Henrik’s read of the moment. “It was the ship’s horn tooting in the distance, and other things echoing too. The silence and the anticipation… The blood whispering in our ears. A strange mood set in… almost like a melody [a musical progression]. A new room opened up in our minds…” Then she resumes the jist of her leaden factuality. “Two crows talk in the trees every day at 4 a.m. They’re quite sweet… Then your “summer vacation bird” appears…” Henrik is recalled as responding to this introduction, “You sound like a museum guide…” She responds with, “I think we should kiss each other…” The choreography of her gleaming eyes, his soldiering forth, and his ending on top of her on the carpet is indelible, not requiring any additions. Henrik gently touches her cheek. Then a deep kiss and a pan to Gruffman with his own saga of alienation. A cut to the morning, discloses only their arms and hands reaching upward and touching, as if a primer were found to be a better bet. Marie, as if to disarm any notion of her being not so bad, becomes a radio soap opera ingénue. “Now you have a lover… How does it feel? Exciting? I’m sure you’ll tell your friends. Will you boast about us?” Properly miffed by this violence, he says, “I can’t give any guarantees. But we will get married.” She commands, “But now! How do you feel right now? Haven’t you longed for this?” He once again admits having had fears. “And you’re not now,” she probes, being almost a selfie about making a splash. On hearing that he’s no longer afraid, she has to brag, “I’m never afraid of anything!”

That gross overestimation becomes the mantra of her dark solution to form a happy ending (for her) within their deadly reconnaissance. She covers his mouth as he adds, “I am” [afraid]. That cover will launch her woodland theatrical regime, going lickety-split to shed an unsupportable endeavor. (Gruffman’s being a steady source of love becomes almost totally lost in the shuffle.) And they race to the shore—Hollywood-intensity-style—early rebels without a (viable) cause. A piccolo motif applying a whip, we see them on the lake, she in her stolid rowboat, they in their lyrical canoe. Then to the vicinity of their cabin-castle, where he lifts her over his head as if on the ballet stage, the Romantic-era fantasy so wrong in this world of very hard acrobatics, and only then deploying juggling which might catch fire. A rain shower leads to them hunkering down on the cabin cot. Marie reads the unwelcome passage, “Days like pears, round and lustrous, threaded on a golden string [onscreen, a stormy sky… a church]. Days filled with fun and caresses, nights of waking dreams. When did we sleep? We had no time for sleep…”

Pan to Marie in real time. She finds Erland in his kitchen. He tells her, “Nothing’s ever surprised me in my life.” Boarding the boat back to the rehearsal, the sway of a lamp lights up more reverie, the reverie of her putting her foot down. It begins with her on pointe, working out in the garret. The arrival of Henrik and Gruffman is nothing but an annoyance. “So, it’s you two…” The two visitors sit on the floor feeling hated. After a while, Henrik says, “You don’t care about me. I’m always waiting for you.”/ “I’ve got a job to do… Fine… Just say the word…” She reasons, “We’ve been together night and day for two months… Good lord, you’re a pain today! Here I am groveling and apologizing… Just go. I’m fed up with your moods…” [moods being their real “job to do”]. She does engineer a truce upon this shaken basis, telling us, “I spent the whole day looking for him…” She finds him at his hostel/ mansion, where an influential aunt and a clergyman with a big hat, remind us of the trials of Alice in Wonderland. (This being another instance of lazy mood headed for LA.) Their being addicted to chess opens the door to Bergman’s The Seventh Seal. As if a marvel of paradox, the grandee claims, “I like living. That’s why I’ll outlive the bunch of you! Nevertheless, I still feel like a ghost.” Marie passes on the invitation to enjoy the “port.” Also, part of the awkward standoff, the divine states, “This may seem ridiculous, but I have the strange feeling I’m rubbing elbows with Death himself” [a reprise of the frissons at the outset].

As if now the Red Queen must rule, they encounter a fizzling fireworks display, move on to the cabin and play dubious razzmatazz vinyl discs, which bleed over to early Disney animation (by her) drawn on a paper sleeve. The show (while they drink their diminished milk) features them: Gruffman, made to sit down, while the lovers flirt; Gruffman becoming the fat sentry; and the old lady’s chest of money coming their way. The last vignette has the chest of money, the preacher and a wedding not happening. The chest changes to the big sentry, the ballerina becomes morose, and all that is left is Henrik’s sailor hat and a ballerina being the dying swan of the ballet, Swan Lake. From there, she declares, melodramatically, “Listen, it’s so quiet. Suddenly, everything went quiet.”/ “Maybe we’ve landed on another planet,” is how Henrik now unhappily reveals his capitulating to Disney. “An alien planet,” Marie piles on [about to claim a victim]. They crawl out of the little doorway, bathed in moonlight (doing its best). The one never afraid of anything becomes uneasy about a crying wind. His attempt to calm her, while having bought into her bathos, slides along to, “Such fine breasts you have, miss!” That jag of witlessness culminates with her, “As for me, I’ll be faithful as long as I feel like it. And since I always feel like it, I’ll be faithful till doomsday.” (The register here is just to the left of pre-Code-Hollywood.) There is a loud bird call. “What an ominous sound!” she shudders. (One person’s shudder being another person’s glitch. Both of them miles from their personal best, while personal becomes a disease.) He, dragged along by her cripplement, says, at this point of worn-down traction, “Don’t you recognize the eagle owl?” Oblivious to the puerility they have contracted, there she is, “I don’t know. I just feel like crying tonight. It’s like a toothache in my soul.” Hollywood forever, she emotes, “Hold me so I don’t break into pieces!” He, never realizing embracing a crash, replies, “My little darling. My love. My dearest darling and beloved friend. Hold me tight. Tighter. Let’s stay up all night until the sun rises, and the trolls burst…”

It’s the morning of the supposed Olympian love cake, and he’s ready to keep the so-called magic alive. He scampers to the top of a picturesque ridge overlooking the pretty waters, and takes flight. The rock face he rocks leaves him close to death. Gruffman comes to his struggle to right the ship that might have resolved to something she’d never become. By the time she arrives at the hard facts, he tells her—all poetry lost—“My back!” (His “back,” his second front of deadly and ravishing truth, if only he could have steadied it, becomes a fitting epitaph to a young adventurer.

The conclusion of Henrik’s life is not quite the conclusion of Henrik’s being a player in Marie’s life. The saga’s last moments comprise the lovers, in a Stockholm hospital room, where he regains consciousness for a few seconds before dying. Her strongest emotion is horror, not love. She had arrived wearing a chic, shiny black leather coat, giving her continuity with the American melodramas she had burrowed into at the end of the summer. (Similarly, she suggests here an oil slick.) Her retreat from the hospital, with no further concern toward any sequel, is as stagey as it is incipiently uncanny. Piling on the pushy “mystery,” she and Erland (he having secured the diary) create a film noire parade along a corridor while exiting the mishap. First there is Marie, enclosed by shadows resembling prison bars. Following her, like a gumshoe, there is the silhouette of Erland pulling on his European habit like a cape. From out of that delirium, she condemns Gruffman to death and allows Erland to confirm her sense of being cheated by life, resentful nihilism. “I’d spit in his [God’s] face!” The uncle/ paramour, holds forth with, “Protect yourself, build a wall around yourself, so the misery can’t get to you.” She tells us—the diary segueing to the career of a prima ballerina of questionable quality—“That’s how I forgot Henrik… In the end, I wasn’t just protected but locked inside…”

That trace of self-criticism needs thirteen years to yield a pitiful “recovery,” as problematic-heavy as noir is problematic-light. The evening rehearsal proceeds nicely; but Marie’s concentration remains divided. The sentry informs her that the “hack” with the trench coat had been at the door again, “but he left.” She assures those ancients that she saw him. This surprises them inasmuch as, “it didn’t make her happy either…” In her inner sanctum she’s visited with eerie features of décor; but “it didn’t make her happy, either.” A visit from one of the leaders of the company, trying out his disguise for the figure of Dr. Coppelius—wherein the latter attempts to bring to life a puppet—has the same haplessness, concerning lightening up, as the décor did. “You don’t dare leave, yet you don’t dare stay… You see your life clearly just once… when all your protective walls come tumbling down. You stand there naked and cold… seeing yourself as you really are… I can see it in your eyes” [that you have had such a brush]… Then the hack obtrudes; and a hack interplay, from both “lovers,” ensues. She asks, “What do you think of the two of us, really? We’re nothing to write home about.” She comes to a point of veering. She blurts out, “So now, Henrik…” The voice of the street pounces on this, “Is my name Henrik?” She replies by handing him the diary and telling him to read it overnight. (What would come of it, she has no idea; but she would be forming some possibilities trailing out to others.) In a voice-over, this time not manufactured by Henrik, she tells us, “I feel like crying all this week and next… Crying away all my shabbiness… and all this wasted time… [But] Do I want to cry at all? If I really look deep inside, I’m actually happy!” (She puts out her tongue to the mirror she has been subjecting herself to. The Hollywood soundtrack only approximates her mood.)

All we pretty much see of the next day is a bit of the performance of Swan Lake. One twist shows the noire lover backstage during the bittersweet saga. Did he read the diary carefully? Probably not. Marie, in a lull where she’s not onstage, brings him to a place of rendezvous and she touches his cheek. Then she’s back onstage where her steps bring her to a rather awkward pyramid of less than sublime acrobatics.

Does the oracle in the Dr. Coppelius disguise speak truth about, “You see your life clearly just once?” How about three or four times? Would that be a life? How far could Henrik (a very early version of the Dr. Borg, in Wild Strawberries [1957]) have gone, were he never foolishly became in awe of Marie? From here on in, we must ponder the vast subtleties of this neglected open door of a film by Bergman, having slammed perhaps a bit too forcefully his clowns. It is well and good to measure the horrors of “virtuousness.” But interludes of magic there bring to bear a second front, and its acrobatics and juggling.

#ingmar bergman

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